George Takei got reparations. He says they 'strengthen the integrity of America'

Eighty years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order that sent thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps. Actor George Takei was among them.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

On this day 80 years ago, the president of the United States signed an executive order that sent around 70,000 American citizens into internment camps for years.

GEORGE TAKEI: I was 5 years old at the time. It was a terrorizing morning that I will never be able to forget. Literally, at gunpoint, we were ordered out of our home.

SIMON: That's George Takei. While he's still best known for playing Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek, he's also an activist whose causes include getting reparations for Japanese American internment camp survivors. He talked about that struggle with NPR's Neda Ulaby.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: George Takei was little in 1942 and afraid of the soldiers who forced his family from their home, one of thousands of lost houses, farms, stores, temples, churches and cars that belonged to Japanese Americans.

TAKEI: Some people had their life savings taken from them just because we looked like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor.

ULABY: Such economic violence amounted to an estimated $6 billion in today's money. George Takei has told his story over and over...

(SOUNDBITE OF KENJI BUNCH SONG, "LOST FREEDOM")

ULABY: ...Recently in a contemporary piece of classical music that premiered last year at the Moab Music Festival. As part of the piece called "Lost Freedom," composer Kenji Bunch asked the actor to share the testimony he presented before Congress in 1981.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOST FREEDOM")

TAKEI: I urge restitution for the incarceration of Japanese Americans because that restitution would, at the same time, be a bold move to strengthen the integrity of America.

ULABY: George Takei and his fellow activists succeeded. In 1988, Japanese Americans who'd been interned were given $20,000 each and a formal apology. That legislation was signed by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan. George Takei dedicated all the money he received to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

TAKEI: You know, $20,000 would not have covered all that just our family lost. And my father was the one who was tortured the most in internment.

ULABY: George Takei says his father died in 1979.

TAKEI: Never to know there would be an apology. And I think that would have meant much more to him than the monetary restitution.

ULABY: In part because of his own experience, Takei feels strongly about reparations for the descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

TAKEI: I support the redress movement for African Americans. For us, it was four horrific years. For African Americans, it's four torturous centuries of reason for redress.

ANDRE PERRY: I love that. I love that. You know, if he was around, I'd give him a big hug. I'd say, you're my brother because he is my brother.

ULABY: Andre Perry studies reparations at American University and the Brookings Institution. George Takei, he says, understands at a cellular level the damage that comes from ignoring injustice.

PERRY: When George speaks out on reparations, he is speaking the real American dream that you can be a different persuasion but share a common cause. George is exerting a level of patriotism that we don't see today. I may not be related to you, but civically, I'm your brother. I'm your sister. I'm your friend.

ULABY: The historic experiences of Black Americans and Japanese Americans are obviously very different, Perry says. But ultimately, it's about getting to a similar place.

PERRY: Even with slavery, it's not impossible to find out who deserves reparations from that. And it's clearly not impossible for redlining in the criminal justice atrocities that was not that long ago. We can identify who deserves how much. It's really about willingness.

ULABY: Experiments in reparations for Black Americans are underway today in cities such as Asheville, N.C, and Evanston, Ill. And at the statewide level, reparations are being studied now by the California Assembly. This cheers George Takei.

TAKEI: We're a nation of symbols. The flag is a symbol. The Pledge of Allegiance is a symbol. And that symbolic apology was profoundly important.

(SOUNDBITE OF KENJI BUNCH SONG, "LOST FREEDOM")

ULABY: When George Takei testified before Congress about reparations in 1981, he started off by saying democracy is fragile. In the new music piece, he read a section from his testimony asserting that democracy is only as powerful as the people who make it so.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOST FREEDOM")

TAKEI: It is my belief that America today is strong enough and confident enough to recognize a grievous failure.

ULABY: I asked George Takei if he still believes that today. He said yes. He believes America and Americans are strong and honorable enough for the best of this country's ideals to prevail. Neda Ulaby, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.